What do you think about when the term "memory device" gets tossed around? Kingston DRAM and Corsair’s 16GB DDR3/1600 Vengeance kit in the 2011 Dream Machine pops into our head. Now, sadly, we're going to have pictures of Bill Cosby's wrinkled, funny face dancing around in our skulls whenever memory springs to mind. Curse you, NC State researchers! A team from the University created a new type of memory designed to work in soggy situations, and the chip's reminiscent of everybody's favorite animal-based desert.

Here's a reality check for anyone who's complained about the price of RAM recently. The year was 2006 and I was wrapping up a review of a Kingston HyperX 1GB DDR2-1066 kit for another publication. I looked up the street price and found it was $250, which at the time was on the high side of normal for a 1GB kit at that frequency. A 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 kit was selling for $400 that same year. Back then, it wasn't cheap being a PC balla. And today? You can pick up an 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 kit for $65 shipped. Times have changed, and for DRAM makers, it hasn't been for the better. That's why they're considering production cuts.

We admittedly missed Adata's July 4th announcement of a new memory module because, well, like many of our readers residing in the U.S. of A., we were burning burgers and being careful not to lose any typing fingers setting off fireworks (legal ones, of course). Though we're a few days late, it's worth pointing out Adata's new 8GB XPG Gaming Series DDR3L 1333G desktop memory module, the only 8GB low voltage memory stick (not kit) in existence boasting a 1333MHz frequency.

Mozilla's Firefox browser rose to prominence by doing things Microsoft's Internet Explorer refused to do, like tabbed browsing, providing frequent updates (five years passed between the release of IE 6 and IE 7), playing nice with Web standards, and supporting extensions. But if Firefox has an Achilles heel, it's the browser's notorious memory leak problem that some users have reported with each and every release. Word on the Web is that Mozilla may have finally found a permanent solution.

Engineers at IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland claim they've come up with a breakthrough in phase change memory (PCM) technology that, for the first time, would allow it to store data for longer periods, potentially paving the way for lower cost solid state chips that are faster and more reliable than today's multi-level cell (MLC) flash memory chips. The trick is in figuring out a solution to a problem called "drift."

Feel free to load up on DDR3 memory without worrying about it going obsolete in the next 12 months, or even 24 months. According to market research firm IHS iSuppli, DDR3 modules, which currently claim between 85-90 percent of the memory market, will remain the dominant DRAM type for at least three more years before it starts to give up ground to faster, next-generation DDR4 modules.

For better or worse, long gone are the days when memory kits were marketed based on frequency and timings alone. Now we have memory kits marketed for specific platforms and processors, a trend that's underscored by Patriot Memory's new "Gamer 2 (G2) Series, AMD Edition" aimed at -- *drum roll* -- gamers putting together an AMD-based system.

Mozilla's Firefox started out as the little browser that could and has since grown into a full-fledged market force in its own right. But behind Mozilla's pretty little Persona-sporting smile lies a terrible secret – a secret that's been there almost from the beginning. A secret that can sometimes cripple the otherwise spunky browser. You see, just like poor old confused Aunt Dorothy, Firefox has a memory leak. That's not news. What is news is the fact that Mozilla might finally be stepping up to the plate to fix the problem.

Samsung today announced the introduction of 30nm-class DDR3 DRAM modules for PC upgrades, and if you're to take the company at its word, these new modules are all that and a bag of fat free chips with all the flavor of regular chips. More specifically, Samsung promises that this new generation of memory is faster and more energy efficient, claims you'll be able to put the test when the parts ship through consumer and retail channels later this summer.

We're pretty sure no jobs exist for 'Door-to-Door DRAM Salesman,' but if you should see such an opening in the classifieds section of Craigslist, don't bother applying. The DRAM market is in a sorry state, profit margins are thin, and things don't appear to be improving with time. Case in point, A-DATA Chairman Simon Chen said the DRAM market is the worst it's been in 15 years, and that was back in 2008! Well, the numbers are in for the first quarter of 2011, and it's more of the same.